The American Media and Presidential Campaigns

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the Thomas Patterson book "Out of Order," which takes the mainstream media to task for how it covers modern presidential campaigns. The paper concurs with Patterson's argument that the media has taken over many of the duties formerly handled by the political parties themselves, such as judging a candidate's qualifications and bridging the gap between candidates and voters. It is also critical of both the quantity and quality of the media's coverage, arguing that the incessant coverage of the polls and other "horse race" type stories discourage voters from paying attention more carefully.

From the Paper:

"In the book Out of Order, a scathing critique of the failures of the current state of media coverage of presidential campaigns, author Thomas Patterson strongly disagrees with the notion that the news media serves as an adequate mechanism to deliver election news in a manner conducive to the demands of democracy. Instead, Patterson argues that the reforms of the McGovern-Fraser Commission inadvertently changed the role that the media is expected to fulfill in elections. With the decline of political parties as a force in the nomination process, the media is no longer expected to simply fill the role of watchdog. Instead, the media is now expected to play the dual role of the party as well, establishing candidates' fitness for office, and bridging the gap between candidates and voters as the party once did."

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